Richard Allenby-Pratt

This project looks at landscapes in the United Arab Emirates that have been impacted upon by the practices of modern human consumption. This may variously include the extraction and production of resources, processing of the same, manufacturing and construction, logistics, retail, end use and ultimately waste management, disposal and reuse. Sometimes the exact nature of the land use photographed remains mysterious. The landscape of the UAE was essentially wild and almost entirely natural until very recently. Previously, the appearance of this landscape had only altered on a geological, or at least climatic, timescale. The occupiers of this landscape considered it with a mostly critical eye and understandably so; it might be argued that this was an environment that human life largely did battle with in order to survive. In the last 50 years, and most particularly in the last 15, rampant development and exponential population growth, mainly through economic migration, have left few areas untouched. I am most interested in the places on the fringe of human activity; places that could neither be called natural nor developed, that maybe once were beautiful but are now scarred.